Philadelphia teachers say they have to ‘cobble together’ time off because the school district doesn’t provide paid parental leave

For Philadelphia School District employees, planning maternity leave usually means hoarding sick days and saving up a nest egg to cover unpaid time. It might mean timing conception so childbirth will intersect with the beginning of summer vacation — an impractical strategy for many couples — or delaying pregnancy for years.

That’s because teachers and staff in the Philadelphia School District get no paid parental leave.

“The dramatic irony stands out when it’s the educators who are tasked with helping to educate and raise Philadelphia’s children who are asked to step away from their own families to help keep that going,” said Larissa Pahomov, an English teacher at the Science Leadership Academy.

The Philadelphia School District is the city’s fourth-largest employer and the 10th-largest employer in the entire state of Pennsylvania. More than 70% of Philadelphia teachers identify as women, according to state records, and about half of all U.S. teachers have children who still live at home.

Stagnant pay and rising costs of education have been prime pain points cited in explaining a shortage of teachers statewide, including in Philadelphia. Current educators say the lack of parental leave is a contributor as well.

“People leave the district because of these policies,” said Bevin Journey, an occupational therapist for the district, who gets the same benefits as teachers. “At some point it just becomes not financially viable.”

Still, the teachers’ reality isn’t unique — many employers provide little or no paid parental leave. While the federal Family Medical Leave Act requires large employers to allow new parents 12 weeks of leave after childbirth without losing their position, it does not require employers to pay them for that time.

“People are leaving professions that don’t provide [paid parental leave]... they’ll probably make same or more money somewhere else with far less stress and more flexibility in their schedule,” said State Sen. Katie Muth (D., Chester, Montgomery), who has pushed for greater state protections for pregnant workers. “We’re kind of, as a state, just letting this happen.”

Asked about how the lack of paid parental leave affects recruitment, district spokesperson Monique Braxton acknowledged that public schools nationwide have been affected by “the changing labor market,” adding that Philadelphia schools are staffed at 98% or better this year.

“It’s always our goal to provide our employees the best possible pay and benefits, within the bounds of what we can afford and while balancing the need for students to have consistent access to quality educators, schools and learning experiences that meet their various needs,” Braxton said in a statement to The Inquirer.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, the union that represents teachers in the city’s schools, proposed paid parental leave in its last collective bargaining, but it didn’t get into the contract.

“Parental leave is something we will continue to fight for,” PFT President Jerry Jordan said in a statement to The Inquirer. “It will certainly be a priority in our next negotiations,” in 2024.

The Caucus of Working Educators, an activist group within the PFT, wants to make sure of that.

“The lack of paid parental leave for district employees is a very common frustration we hear about from rank and file PFT members, and has contributed to health and financial struggles for many educators and their families,” caucus members said in a joint statement to The Inquirer. “A new policy is essential.”

“Cobbled together” is a phrase frequently used when teachers are discussing their time off after the birth of a child.

All teachers get 10 sick days per year, which they can accumulate, but the most they can take at once is six weeks after a vaginal birth or eight weeks after a cesarean section. “Sick leave will not be granted for the sole purpose of child rearing,” the school district’s website says.

After six or eight weeks, employees with continuing childbirth-related illness must provide documentation from a doctor to continue using their accrued sick time. Parents can also take up to 89 days of unpaid leave to care for a new baby. If those 89 days extend past May 1, they may extend that time until the end of the school year without losing their benefits or seniority. School district employees can take “up to four years of parental leave without pay and without benefits,” Braxton added, with the option to return to the district if there’s a vacancy.

Journey, a single parent by choice, carefully calculated the timing of her pregnancy and maternity leave based on school district policy. “You should see the spreadsheets I had to make,” she said. She spent six years saving up paid sick days and enough money to cover her unpaid leave.

After Journey gave birth in October, she returned to work for two months so she could split up her leave and take advantage of the May 1 rule. That would allow her to be with her child from February through August, unpaid, in addition to her two months of leave after giving birth.

“I was so fortunate. I was able to save money, take time, plan the date of conception. And that allowed me to line things up in a way that was ideal,” she said. “Obviously that’s not a typical situation and not something people should be expected to do.”

The school district offers a short-term disability plan that provides people who opt into it with partial pay for medical leave, but it’s costly for people without sick leave saved and usually can’t be used for parental leave past six or eight weeks. The district also offers a sabbatical, which can be taken after 10 years of service at half-pay, as long as the user completes continuing education courses.

Pahomov intentionally planned her sabbatical to coincide with her child’s birth in 2019, at 35 years old and 11 years teaching. “Biology aside, it’s still a difficult needle to thread because you need a decade of service and you need to be able to plan financially to handle the half-pay.”

Most Pennsylvania public school districts do not provide paid parental leave, according to the Pennsylvania State Education Association. The National Council on Teacher Quality surveyed a sample of 150 school districts across the U.S. last year, finding that just 18% of them offered any paid maternity leave beyond accrued sick time, and fewer than a dozen offered teachers their full salary during that leave.

“I’m constantly aware of the ramifications of taking a single sick day,” said Shira Cohen, a North Philadelphia middle school teacher who hopes to be a parent someday. “That’s one less day I’ll have for potential parental leave.”

Using all their banked sick time to recover from childbirth creates additional challenges for parents of young children, given that babies and toddlers in day care get sick up to 12 times a year.

“I’m constantly aware of the ramifications of taking a single sick day.”

“If employers force people to use all their sick time when they have a baby, what happens when the baby gets sick?” asked Philadelphia City Councilmember Kendra Brooks, who entered the political scene as an activist for quality public school access and has also advocated for paid sick leave laws during her time on Council.

“Both families and school communities pay the price,” Brooks said. “Parents aren’t able to take care of sick kids, which means that more students and more teachers are going to school sick and spreading illnesses.”

If a birthing teacher wants to have more than one child, it means three more years of working without taking any sick days, or four if a C-section is needed — and likely saving up to take unpaid time as well.

Taking any unpaid time off also means retiring later. Teachers in Pennsylvania can retire after 35 years of service, regardless of their age, but unpaid time off doesn’t count toward years of service.

“If you’re not getting paid, you’re not paying into your retirement,” said one teacher in her 34th year, who asked not to be named because she doesn’t want to jeopardize her retirement plans. She had multiple children during her time as a teacher and will have to work for several additional months after her 35th school year concludes.

For non-birthing parents, sick time cannot be used to care for a new baby. Unpaid time is the only option.

Highly educated men are increasingly prioritizing paid parental leave for non-birthing parents when deciding where to work, according to a recent U.S. Department of Labor report, and leave for non-birthing parents is associated with better professional success for women. One recent study even found that providing parental leave for men may make them less sexist.

Charlie McGeehan, a social studies teacher at Academy at Palumbo and father of two children, has “plentiful” accrued sick time, but he wasn’t allowed to use it when his second child was born last May.

“We’re having a hard time holding onto teachers right now, and I don’t think this makes it any easier,” McGeehan said. “I’m personally tied to teaching in Philadelphia, but I could also see [why others have] a motivation to teach elsewhere.”

Both of McGeehan’s children were due around the end of the school year — while not the only factor in their planning, he said, that timing was a “calculation” for his family. But their second child was born a little bit early, so he used four personal days and four unpaid days off. Family came from out of town to help care for his wife, newborn and 4-year-old while he finished out the school year.

“We were fortunate to be right at the end of the school year,” he said. “I only had to go back for two weeks.”

A growing number of people are getting access to paid parental leave, and they’re using it.

Pennsylvania state government and state-related higher education employers are increasingly offering at least a few weeks of paid maternity leave. In the corporate world, more than half of professional, scientific and technical employers offer paid maternity leave.

Moving to a nearby state may be an option, Muth suggested. New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and New York have or will soon implement state-funded paid parental leave programs for workers at most large employers.

Councilmember Brooks wants to see paid family leave become the norm for Philadelphia and the entire state.

“Educators in our public schools have tough jobs, and we are facing a major shortage of educators in Philly right now,” Brooks said. “The School District’s anti-worker, antifamily leave policies only make the situation worse.”

If the PFT and Caucus of Working Educators successfully win paid parental leave in their next union contract, it would make the Philadelphia School District a leader on the issue. Most Pennsylvania districts only offer unpaid leave following the birth of a child, said Chris Lilienthal, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State Education Association. North Penn School District in Montgomery County offers one week of paid parental leave in its newest contract.

At the same time, Philadelphia schools are already facing grave financial challenges in the next few years, as pandemic-related relief funds are expected to run out in 2025.

“To ask for a six-week paid maternity leave because there are so many women of childbearing age in our district, I realize financially that’s a huge ask,” Journey said.

Pahomov, who used her sabbatical as an extended parental leave, believes all parents should have a similar opportunity to bond with their babies. Still, she said, “I don’t pin this one primarily on the school district. I just pin it on the fact that market capitalism doesn’t prioritize families.”

To counter that, perhaps, some states that have created paid parental leave laws put their own insurance funds in place, with specific rules on contributions by employers and employees.

When Gov. Tom Wolf declared in 2020 that all state employees under his jurisdiction would get six weeks of paid parental leave — half the amount recommended by medical groups and scholars — he said he hoped the state legislature would follow his lead.

A state bill was introduced in the last session, but it stalled. Federal legislation has been proposed too, but hasn’t come to fruition.

“Other countries have figured this out,” said Muth. “There’s a way to do this and just have it be part of our basic human rights.”

Creating a paid leave law for Pennsylvania wouldn’t just help the state recruit and retain public school teachers, Muth said, but it would be a broader economic boon by creating a more robust and stable workforce. She thinks it hasn’t been a priority because more than two-thirds of the state’s lawmakers are men, who continue to bear far less of the child-care burden than women on average, and they lack empathy for the people impacted most.

For Cohen, not yet a parent but aspiring to be one, finding empathy isn’t too difficult. The district’s policy is already causing her anxiety.

“There’s so many things about pregnancy that you can’t plan,” Cohen said. “It’s scary to go into a pregnancy or being a parent not knowing how much leave you have, or not knowing if it’s going to be enough.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the number of Pennsylvania school districts offering parental leave. It has been updated to add North Penn School District.